Brenda Tremblay

Classical Morning Host and Producer

Brenda Tremblay

While you’re sleeping, she’s thinking.

Thinking about the best ways to wake you up.

A native of Albion, New York, NEA Fellow Brenda Tremblay bolts out of bed each weekday morning at 4:00 a.m. to present classical music on 91.5 FM, streaming at classical915.org. Before she became a daily host on WXXI-FM in 2009, she tried her hand at every task in public radio, from hosting overnight blues gigs to freelancing for National Public Radio. Her NPR reports and local documentaries earned three Gracies from the Association of Women in Radio and Television, many AP awards, and a national Gabriel Award.

In addition to waking up super early, Brenda produces and hosts the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra's radio concerts on Monday nights at 8 p.m. She also collaborates with WXXI news to cover the arts across all media services.

Outside the broadcast studio, singing is Brenda’s passion. She’s performed with choirs in Carnegie Hall, Westminster Abbey, and in the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. In Rochester, some of her best memories have been made with friends in the Rochester Oratorio Society and local chamber choirs Madrigalia and First Inversion. Currently she serves as Music Director at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Brockport, New York.

Say what you will about beauty pageants, but this one is a winner in the eyes of classical music fans. On Sunday night in Atlantic City, opera singer and composer Nia Franklin was crowned Miss America.

Franklin is a native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina who earned her master's degree in music composition from UNC School of the Arts. She moved to New York after being accepted at the Kenan Fellow program at Lincoln Center Education in Manhattan.

Russian pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff was stingy with his talent. The only recordings we have of him playing were produced in studios, under strict controls. That's why a recently-discovered performance of the artist interpreting his Symphonic Dances is so exciting to classical music afficianados.

An upcoming Fringe Festival performance by Rochester chamber choir First Inversion is embroiled in unexpected controversy after recent social media posts slammed the event for offering African-American spirituals sung by a nearly all-white choir. (Disclaimer: the writer of this post is a member of the ensemble.)

More details are emerging about upcoming funeral services for the late U.S. Senator John McCain. Before he died from brain cancer last weekend, he requested that opera singer Renée Fleming perform the Irish standard "Danny Boy" at his memorial service.

She has agreed.

"She is very honored," her manager, Dannielle Thomas, told the Democrat and Chronicle. "It's going to be a beautiful service."